Adv In Common Sense

Author : Thomas Paine
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (211 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Common Sense written by Thomas Paine and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-12 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in plain language to be understood by the educated and uneducated alike, Thomas Paine's Common Sense became an immediate bestseller when first published in January 1776. Paine, who, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, whom he had met in England, had emigrated to America less than two years before, published Common Sense anonymously, with the title page of the first edition, published by Philadelphia printer Robert Bell, simply saying it was "Written by an Englishman." Although hostilities with Britain had already begun, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord having taken place nine months earlier on April 19, 1775, the inhabitants of America considered themselves Englishmen, and many wished for a reconciliation with their mother country. Paine persuasively argued against this notion of reconciliation, and that the time had come for a separation from Britain, and why the present tome was so opportune. Going further than merely calling for separation from Britain, Paine also laid out in great detail his ideas for what an independent government of America - a democratic republican government - might look like. On January 9, 1776, the very same day that the first edition of Common Sense was released, a speech made by King George to the Parliament on October 27, 1775, was published in The Pennsylvania Evening Post. In fact, an advertisement for Common Sense, which began "This day published," appeared in the paper right next to the king's speech. King George's intent was clear - he intended "to put a speedy end" to the colonists' rebellion by means of increased military force. The king's speech, which Paine described as "a piece of finished villainy," prompted him to write an appendix to Common Sense, in which he wrote that the speech "instead of terrifying, prepared a way for the manly principles of Independance," and reiterated his argument for independence in even more urgent language. Due to a dispute with Robert Bell over the profits and copyright of the first edition, Paine contracted with brothers Thomas and William Bradford, the publishers of The Pennsylvania Evening Post, to publish the new edition - the edition from which this edition is reprinted. In addition to the appendix responding to King George's speech, the new Bradford edition included an address "To the Representatives of the Religious Society of the People called Quakers." Paine's address was in response to a pamphlet titled "The Ancient Testimony and Principles of the people called Quakers renewed, with Respect to the King and Government, and touching the Commotions now prevailing in these and other parts of America, addressed to the People in General," published by the Quaker representatives from Pennsylvania and New Jersey who attended a meeting in Philadelphia on January 20, 1776. Paine, whose own father was a Quaker, was highly critical of this pamphlet, arguing that it went against Quaker principles to mix religion and politics, and that the Quaker leaders who issued the pamphlet did not speak for all Quakers. True to the edition published by the Bradford brothers, any inconsistencies in spelling and capitalization in this edition are as they appear in the original.